Yesterday, following “one of the most complex and costliest criminal investigations since the Second World War,” British police were finally able to convict three men of plotting to blow up a series of transatlantic airplanes in a planned terrorist attack that would have potentially been “three times more deadly than the 9/11 attacks.” Today, British intelligence officials are saying that former Vice President Dick Cheney “nearly destroyed” efforts to bring the bomb plotters to justice by ordering the arrest of a suspect before all the evidence was gathered:
Dick Cheney, the former US Vice President, nearly destroyed Britain’s efforts to bring the airline bomb plotters to justice, police and intelligence experts said today.
By ordering the early arrest of Rashid Rauf, the bombers’ link man in Pakistan, Washington forced British police to detain the suspects in the UK before all the evidence had been gathered, it was claimed.
Andy Hayman, who served as the Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations while the terror attacks were being planned, writes today of the Cheney-ordered arrest of Rauf, “[It] hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure.”